Line #11 Literature/HouseOfSuns


1	[[quoteright:346:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/198.jpg]]
2
3	''House of Suns'' is a novel by Welsh sci-fi author Creator/AlastairReynolds, set in [[BroadStrokes more or less]] the same universe as the novella [[http://subterraneanpress.com/thousandth-night-ebook Thousandth Night]].
4
5	Six million years in the future, the entire galaxy is a UsedFuture. Tens of thousands of human civilizations have risen and fallen. The galaxy's been united under a single banner [[EternalRecurrence too many times to count]]. In the face of deep time, each galactic federation always falls. No one group endures.
6
7	Except the Lines. Individually known as "shatterlings", the Gentian Line is composed of [[DwindlingParty slightly under]] [[SendInTheClones a thousand clones]] made from a woman who lived in the 31st century. They individually [[WalkingTheEarth roam the galaxy]], traveling from star to star near the speed of light, skipping over the ages via {{time dilation}}. Their purpose is to explore and catalogue civilizations. Every quarter-million years they all come together to share their experiences and combine their knowledge. They've existed for the past six million years, witness to the constant grind of civilization.
8
9	Campion and Purslane are two shatterlings who are running late to the most recent Line reunion, having been delayed for a variety of reasons. Fortunately, during their travels, they manage to rescue an amnesiac android named Hesperus. Returning him to the [[MechanicalLifeforms Machine People]], a society of advanced robots, would put the Gentian Line on very good terms with them, so Campion and Purslane figure that will excuse them for their lateness to the Reunion.
10
11	Things aren't quite what they seem. Hesperus is discovered to have a [[UnroboticReveal human arm]] underneath his metal exterior, a fact that even he can't explain due to his amnesia. And another guest of theirs mysteriously dies during the journey to the reunion. But worst of all is that when they get to the Reunion planet, they find it utterly wiped out. Turns out, someone is attempting to wipe out the Line. Someone who has intimate knowledge of the Line's secrets, and who keeps a ''very'' long grudge.
12
13	[[SimilarlyNamedWorks No relation]] to the sci-fi game ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDyingSun''. It also has no direct relation to ''VideoGame/CryingSuns'', although the latter operates from a similar premise.
14
15	!! This novel provides examples of:
16	* AIIsACrapshoot: Subverted: [[spoiler:In the past, a robot culture emerged. Humanity, fearing this trope, created a virus which infected all the robots with a kill-switch, to be used only in case humanity felt it needed to be. The virus malfunctioned and activated anyway, initiating a genocide. The House of Suns erased all references to the event from history and maintain a conspiracy to keep it that way.]] The plot of the book is primarily driven by the assumption that [[spoiler:the First Machines would want revenge for what was done to them]]. One faction of [[spoiler:the Machine People]] is attempting to prevent that and the other to facilitate it. In the end it turns out [[spoiler: that the First Machines have no interest in what they consider to be a vice of biologicals and have moved on]] thoroughly averting the trope.
17	* AlienSky: The world that the novel starts on has a special atmospheric bubble which, at night, amplifies faint stars and nebulae, creating a very colorful night sky.
18	* AncientConspiracy: [[spoiler:The House of Suns is one, being formed by the Line members responsible for the creation of the virus that wiped out the First Machines. They try to erase any evidence and memories of the First Machines from existence to keep the genocide secret, wiping out Lines and civilizations if necessary.]]
19	* ArtificialGravity: Used by the starships to propel themselves and to protect their occupants from the crushing force of their thrust.
20	* BabyPlanet: The planetoid where Abigail Gentian was raised. While it does not appear to host an atmosphere it does have much stronger gravity than it should due to the black hole in the center of it.
21	* BigDumbObject: The Vigilance, a massive Dyson swarm which archives all human knowledge. May qualify as a Big ''Smart'' Object.
22	* BodyHorror: The far-future torture technique called "sectioning", in which the victim is gradually cut into smaller and smaller pieces while being kept alive (with advanced technology).
23	* ChekhovsGun: There are few mentions about a case of Gentian Stardam failing and the Gentian Line trying to cover it up. This seems to mainly be about how that technology isn't as secure as it should be. Late in the story, [[spoiler:it turns out the Stardam didn't fail: it was deliberately opened by a group of Machine People trying to find a Prior wormhole leading to the Andromeda Galaxy]].
24	* CoolStarShip : The ''Silver Wings Of Morning''. Basically, the starships from the ''Revelation Space'' series turned up to eleven.
25	* CreativeSterility: The [[spoiler:original Machine People]] couldn't create art, but were fascinated by it.
26	* DeflectorShields: Used throughout the novel. A ubiquitous technology during the time of the novel. Also used for inertial dampening, as a ship's shields can be projected internally around its inhabitants, allowing extremely high-g maneuvers that would normally render everybody inside to jelly.
27	* DysonSphere: The Gentian Line's stardams, which can ''contain a supernova.''
28	* EndangeredSpecies: Though not a "species", per se, this is pretty much what happens to the Gentian Line. They went from 1000 members to only ''fifty'' after the initial attack on them, and with someone actively gunning for them, they are in real danger of being wiped out forever.
29	* FasterThanLightTravel: Humanity never broke the light speed barrier, and all travel has to be done STL, with [[TimeDilation everything that implies]]. Causality remains an intractable problem. [[spoiler: Until it is revealed at the end that the Priors managed to crack that problem and built a wormhole to Andromeda — and even then, they had to create the Absence that makes Andromeda unobservable from the Milky Way and vice versa in order to preserve causality.]]
30	* FloralThemeNaming: Members of the Gentian Line are named after flowering plants.
31	* TheFogOfAges: The shatterlings have lived through ''six million years'' (though, admittedly, only a couple tens of thousands of those conscious) and routinely re-arrange/edit their memory. It's implied that they could hold all of their memories at once, if they wanted to, but having that many memories would affect their personality so drastically that most choose not to. Most the long-lived characters tend to hold a rough cliff-notes version of their memories in their heads, but not any of the details; the main character Campion intentionally prioritizes his "recent" memories, which in part drives the main plot. The beings who actually lived through those 6 million years consciously tend to have problems verifying old data or check its significance, like Vigiliance [[spoiler:not realizing the importance of their information on the Andromeda and other stuff that would reveal the existence of the First Machines]], or [[spoiler:Abraham Valmik unable to truly confirm his memories about his interactions with the First Machines until his interaction with Hesperus confirms it]].
32	* GentleGiant: The Curators, immortal librarians working and residing within [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything the Vigilance]], who are constantly growing due to their particular brand of life extension and eventually become larger than skyscrapers. Despite the resulting intimidating presence, they are nothing but affable and cooperative during Purslane and Campion's visit.
33	* GhostPlanet: Implied to be very common throughout the galaxy. Since the various descendants of humanity have been cavorting around the galaxy for the past six million years, there are plenty of planets that once played host to technological civilizations only to leave nothing behind but ruins.
34	* HumanitysWake: Due to the sheer number of civilizations that have come before, it seems you can't go ''anywhere'' in the galaxy without bumping into some planet that was colonized, terraformed, rose to prominence, became the center of a galactic civilization, then died out, leaving the ruins to be colonized again by whatever evolved in the three million years that has passed...
35	* HumanPopsicle: Since all travel has to be done STL, all biological travelers are put in abeyance, stasis field where passage of time inside can be tuned to be significantly slower than the outside. Plain cryostasis also exists, however; Purslane prefers it over abeyance because she doesn’t like the feeling of compressed time.
36	* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: [[spoiler:The Lines come into contact with a curious, benign robotic civilization spawned from human technology. The Lines develop a virus to disable the robots if they pose a threat to human civilization, triggered remotely.]] Except [[spoiler:the virus suddenly goes off and begins wiping out the civilization, and the Lines desperately cover it up by ignoring the robots, and then cover it up, by wiping out entire human civilizations and individual Lines.]]
37	* HumanSubspecies: Humanity fractured into a million daughter species, some of which were scarcely recognisable to each other.
38	* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Well, wormholespace anyways.
39	* ICannotSelfTerminate: [[spoiler:When Hesperus/Valmik starts to invade Cadence's mind to find out why are they taking the Silver Wings of Morning to one of Gentian Stardam, Valmik told her to not bother trying to self-destruct to escape, since he disabled that function.]]
40	* ImportedAlienPhlebotinum: The Prior ringworlds that Gentian Line uses to make stardams. They're made of a material that's nigh-indestructible (though prone to shattering if propelled at high speed) and incredibly reflective, but have to be transported across space in one piece since the means of creating them are wholly beyond human science.
41	* InsistentTerminology: "Whisking" for teleportation, and "levator" for any piece of machinery that works against gravity.
42	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Since it's hard to hold massive amount of memories in human brains, one of the Reunion's purpose is to gather information from Line members, catalogue them, and wipe out memories that each individual members don't think is important enough to hold in their brain. See also TheFogOfAges entry above. What Campion chose to remember, and what to wipe becomes an important plot point. Also, [[spoiler:Abigail Gentian, at the end of the creation process of the Gentian Line, deliberately wiped her identity from herself when she chose to become the 1000th member of the Line, so that no one in the Gentian Line, not even herself, would realize who's the original]].
43	* MechanicalLifeforms: The Machine People, a race of human-looking androids with a little bit of [[ClockworkCreature clockwork features]] thrown in for flair. Despite having been around for millions of years, undergoing their own MechanicalEvolution, there's still [[FantasticRacism people who think]] of them as [[JustAMachine nothing more than mindless automatons who just ''imitate'' sentience]].
44	* MegaMawManeuver: Used by a pirate attempting to capture Campion and Purslane's ship.
45	* MileLongShip: Common enough that every member of Gentian Line (and likely most, if not all shatterlings in general) seems to own at least one. Purslane's ship, ''Silver Wings of Morning'', is so large that its main cargo bay has its own ''weather system''.
46	* NoNameGiven: Abigail Gentian can no longer remember the name of her childhood friend.
47	* NotWhatItLooksLike: [[spoiler:The scene where Hesperus/Valmik MindProbe Cadence[[note]]By plunging his arm into the latter's chest to forcibly form data connection between the two[[/note]] can look disturbingly like the former raping the latter. Even Purslane has a hard time convincing herself that it isn't.]]
48	* OppositeSexClone: Half the members of each of the Lines.
49	* OurGiantsAreBigger: Curators of the Vigilance, who can grow to be as large as ''starships''.
50	* PortalNetwork: [[spoiler:The First Machine that Campion meets tells him that there are wormholes throughout the Andromeda galaxy which lead to different galaxies throughout the universe. It also speculates that the 250-million-light-year-wide [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo%C3%B6tes_void Boötes void]] could actually be full of galaxies connected by wormholes, but that each galaxy is otherwise blocked from the rest of the universe so they can use their wormholes for pseudo-FTL travel without violating causality.]]
51	* {{Precursors}}: Priors. Arose billions of years ago, scattered impossibly advanced technology across the galaxy, and then vanished: a perfectly textbook example.
52	* ReactionlessDrive: The starships in this setting use "pseudo-thrust" to attain near-light speeds.
53	* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]] with the Machine People: all that are seen in the book, including Hesperus, resemble metallic caricatures of incredibly beautiful humans, though Purslane notes that Hesperus is a little ''too'' perfect to appear authentically human, thus edging into UncannyValley territory. It is also mentioned by Hesperus that the Machine People appear human out of [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith convenience when dealing with biological species]], and often assume other forms when in their home territories.
54	* ScrewYourself: Campion and Purslane are lovers, and being shatterlings, they were both created with the same initial set of memories from Abigail. They each diverged in the ensuing 6 million years, but there is still a strong taboo against shatterlings associating too closely outside of Celebration.
55	* SendInTheClones: The shatterlings in each Line are all clones of one person; however, they've all been slightly modified, and some are OppositeSexClone, so there's some variation. Better to think of them all as siblings who remember being the same child. Also, at least in the case of the Gentian Line, [[spoiler:the Line progenitor is one of the Line member, but deliberately got their identity wiped out.]]
56	* ShoutOut: This book is pretty much every single Alan Parson's Project song title smashed into a Space Opera screen play.
57	%%* SpaceOpera: And how!
58	%%* SternChase: Across 60,000 light-years of interstellar space.
59	* SubLightspeedSetting: Countless millennia in the future clone-lines traveling the galaxy at near-lightspeed provide some continuity of civilization for the countless human and posthuman colonies across space.
60	* ThatsNoMoon: The protagonists stop at a ringed gas giant because they heard about a spaceship salesman who lives there. They enter the atmosphere and find that he only has a few ships to sell. After some coercion, he shows them his entire collection of ships, [[spoiler:which were hidden inside and disguised as part of the gas giant's ring system.]]
61	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: When the shatterlings' reunion world is destroyed by the entities trying to wipe out the Gentian Line: the world is [[KillSat bombarded from orbit]] and it's [[DeathFromAbove atmosphere is boiled off]] from the sheer energies of the onslaught. Normally that'd be enough to kill anyone, but the aggressors just keep on going, continuing to bombard the planet [[DeathInAllDirections until the crust melts completely]]. ''[[HumiliationConga They still keep on going]]'', pumping so much energy into the planet that it literally [[EarthShatteringKaboom just expands from the heat and disintegrates in a slow-motion kaboom]].
62	* TimeAbyss: The Shatterlings are about 6.4 '''million''' years old, though "only" a couple hundred thousand of those are spent awake. The Curators of the Vigilance are also this, but have [[TheSlowPath lived through the intevening time]] by way of their particular brand of immortality, which makes them slower and more ponderous over time.
63	* TimeDilation: The main reason the Gentian Line has persisted for so long. Also, an unavoidable consequence of pretty much ''any'' kind of space travel, since if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time (read: within a couple thousand years), you pretty much have to crank up the g's until you're near lightspeed.
64	* ToThePain: Mezereon is quite graphic in telling Grilse what sectioning is doing to him and what it will do to him.
65	* TranshumanAliens: The current entire population of the Milky Way Galaxy can trace its ultimate ancestry back to Earth.
66	* UngovernableGalaxy: No interstellar society has persisted for more than a few hundred thousand years courtesy of there being no FasterThanLightTravel or SubspaceAnsible technology; empires have formed then slowly started to unravel and break apart from internal or external pressures and [[EternalRecurrence have done so for the past six million years]]. This process is called “turnover”. Hell, it’s stated that expansionism actually ''shortens'' the lifespan of a civilization. The only constant in the galaxy are the Lines such as Gentian Line: one thousand clones of a woman that lived in the 31st century at the start of humanity's interstellar colonization who live exclusively aboard spaceships that jet around at near-lightspeed, and so due to TimeDilation pass millions of years despite experiencing only thousands.
67	* UnroboticReveal: As described above, Hesperus is discovered to have a human arm. [[spoiler:This is because he's an infiltrator unit designed to gain access into Vigilance, who's not interested in interacting with Machine People, in order to gather information about the First Machines.]]
68	* UnusualUserInterface: Palatial, a sort-of holodeck. It's a small room, but as you walk in you are immersed in a vibrant, computer-generated world. Your brain is continually scanned while you are in it, so the world constantly adjusts and changes according to your wishes.
69	* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: It turns out that [[spoiler:Campion is the one starting the chain of events that end up with the near-destruction of the Gentian Line due to the fact that on the circuit prior, he got some information out of Vigilance that, unknowing to him and most others, could be used to infer the existence of the First Machines. Galingale, the House of Suns' spy in the Gentian Line, realized the significance and his colleagues agreed that the Line must be wiped out in order to preserve the secrecy.]]
70	* UsedFuture: The ships used by the Gentian Line are often millions of years old. There are also millions of planets lying around that have been terraformed, then left forgotten, then rediscovered and colonized, then forgotten, then rediscovered...
71	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The minor character at the beginning of the novel, Dr. Meninx, who is the unwelcome guest that delays the main characters at first, setting off the whole plot. [[spoiler: He dies during a voyage when the water tank he lives in malfunctions suspiciously, after previously acting afraid of Herperus and evasively implying that he had reason to want to kill him. However, it's revealed that Hesperus ''didn't'' murder him, so the characters start to trust Hesperus...and the fact that Dr. Meninx died in the first place is never brought up or questioned again. Literally the whole point of his death was to temporarily cast suspicion on Hesperus, [[RuleOfDrama in order to further the plot slightly]], and the only explanation his death gets is that aquatic species like his regularly go to space with faulty, ramshackle life support for some reason.]]

Context Literature / HouseOfSuns